Seedlings are sprouting in coco - what now? First grow!

[Guest]

Got this information from gaiusmarius concerning feeding my plants during flower. Thought those that are keeping up with this thread might be interested in it. I've heard people questioning whether or not it was OK to use regular NON-coco specific nutes in coco and this is straight from gm. I'm sure a lot of growers out there are not using coco specific nutes and are successful at it and my hats off to them, cause it's got to be more difficult than using coco specific food. And I know there are a ton of good coco growers in this forum and anyone who's completed a grow successfully has more experience than me at growing, but gaiusmarius knows coco inside and out and is EXTREMELY successful using the medium. His page showing what he's doing with it is amazing and it impressed the hell out of me when I first saw it. I'm really not his "boy toy" it just sounds like it, lol, I'm just really, really appreciative of his patience and willingness to teach me how to do this right. And what he's done for me isn't unique. The guy bounces all through these threads helping out anybody that asks for it and a lot that don't. I think he probably just shudders when he sees someone about to fuck up their grow and he just can't stand not trying to keep them from it, hehe. He's got my respect and I don't give that away easily.

Anyway, here's the info I got from him a little while ago:

anyway you must keep giving A+B all the way through flowering. canna coco A+B was actually made to flower with. because coco is very adaptable it works well for vegging too. but it's strong point is the flowering phase.

you only add pk 13/14 on a couple of occasions during flowering. the flowering period is when the canna coco A+B actually begins to shine. very soon after starting 12/12 non coco specific nutes start running into problems, unless supplemented with a bunch of stuff. for the veg phase and early flowering, it is easy to feed them with any old hydro nutes, it's what happens after the first 2 or 3 weeks of 12/12 that tells the story.

just gently up the nutes as the plants get bigger until the 14th day of 12/12, then you should add a dose of pk 13/14 to 1 or 2 waterings, then back to a+b till week 5 of 12/12, when you can give them another blast of pk 13/14. for a few waterings more

depending on the look of the plants you might reduce the A+B for the watering with pk13/14 included. that means if you are giving ec 1.6, then you prepare water at ec 1.4 with A+B and then add the recommended dose of pk13/14 to make the ec 1.7 don't add the whole pk dose on top of the normal A+B nutes unless you are dealing with a very hungry strain.

Hope some of you find the info useful.

Later

 

[Caligrown]

Hey Mojo here's what I got 4 ya...

Also a lot of experienced growers like you have stopped by to help out and offer me advice too.
WHOA!!! THERE!!! Slow down skippy!!!! Don't go throwin around words like "experienced" or even "grower" really. You only got the information I wasn't embarressed to post. The rest of the grow story is that at about 5-6 weeks I fried the roots and screwed up the entire crop. :0(...
I am only into my second run so you and I are on this journey together.

Would like to hear from aizen and find out how many males he ended up with though.
I am not really into dudes....I mean, I don't have a problem with it....It's just not my thing. What AZN does in his house is his business.


Did you take them straight out of those solo cups and into the three gallon pots
I went into 2 gallon mesh bottom pots...


What was the strain and final yield?
The strain is a local hybrid. Super high quality Indica dominant strain.

The final yeild was crap due to the fiasco I initiated during the infamous root burning incidend of '06. I will give you the story in hopes that you and others can avoid making the same blunder.
I have a sealed room with Co2. I had been reading in the forums about people running their nutes at the same concentration as their CO2. You usually run higher concentrations when using Co2. Some of the guys were even talking about 1800-2000 ppms. So right around week 5 I decided to bump my resi up to 1450-1500ppm. In my mind keeping it safe and on the low side. I have a Hanna EC/PH meter that I use to check my resi. My problem was that I didn't understand the concept of EC conversion factors yet. I was using a .5 conversion and so basically I was giving the plants close to 3.0 EC!! (oopsie...my bad)
So the plants stalled out and I went into a tailspin trying to figure out what went wrong....
Interesting though...The buds that were present in week 5 didn't grow at all for 3 weeks they did however ripen. So I ended up with 1lb from 3000 watts
The good news was that it was nice quality. Live and Learn.

What kind of lights are those and is that the distance from the light to the plants that you used throughout the entire grow?
Those are 1000w PL light with Solarmax bulbs. They are professional quality that can't be beat for delivering lumens to the canopy. Inside the hood is an aluminum insert that sits 2 inches above the bulb to reduce the distance light travels before it is refracted back down. The insert has a crazy pattern stamped into it that dramatically improves the light distribution. If you have the "Indoor/Outdoor medical growers handbook" by Jorge Cervantes(best book ever) He talks about them. He refers to them as Hortilux reflectors so I think they are connected somehow. The will burn the foliage from the inside out if set any closer than 30 inches.


Ok, now you're scaring me, lol. Makes me think more and more I need to put em into flower this Saturday!! Unless I get advice to the contrary, I'll go ahead.

That would be your best bet. If you have no stress then you can actually flip the lights after just a couple of days post transplant.

You are definitly going about this the right way. So I am looking forward to seeing you reap the rewards of caring for your girls.

Peace bro ---Cali

 

[bongoman]

Yes - very interested. Thank you.

Was only wondering this morning about PK 13/14.

I'm outdoors in coco, hand watering. Some LowRyder #2 (the Santa Maria cross) and some Deep Chunk x Panama Red F1's.

The LR2's were sexed 2 weeks ago and I mixed today's feed with PK 13/14 - am feeding 2.5mL of A+B plus 1.5mL of PK plus 2.5 Cannazym and 1mL of Rhizo

The DC x PR are still seedlings but I can tell they are going to be hungry - they are on 1mL/Litre right now and looking very cute.

Hope it is OK to piggyback on your thread here mojo, but so far I've been hand watering every other day in accordance with a suggestion from gaiusmarius re outdoors coco.

Hey gm, if you're out there, is this cool? Should I move up to daily waterings? It's pretty hot there - these are only little plants in 3 litre containers.

 

[gaiusmarius]

Hey mojo,

thanks for the kind words, glad to help you get those ladies to shine. i must say, it's been very easy, you have a good green thumb and picked up the coco growing quickly.

ColaforniaKid brings a perfect example of what happens in coco if you over feed and let the medium ec get too high. the plants just go straight to ripening mode. you still get a harvest of highly smokable product, but you don't get the full yield.

bongoman, you just have to decide for yourself, outdoors it really depends on the water use. it will do no harm to water every day, but depending on the hours of direct light they get, it might not be needed. if the plant pots are still heavy on the second day, then you are probably ok with every other day, specially as thats what your plants have gotten used to.

 

[Guest]

Sorry guys for not keeping up with the thread in a more timely manner, but my personal life is demanding more of my time than usual and I'm getting back to the thread as I can and as soon as I can.

Update! Put the plants into 12/12 yesterday and kinda fucked up. The fan I was using if you've noticed in my pics takes up valuable real estate in the closet, so I hung two wall fans up to free up some room. Well I used the closet incandescent light to do it and forgot to turn it off. So their first day in 12/12 consisted of 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of incandescent lighting. Maybe they thought they were in Alaska, hehe. Seeing as how they've got some Northern Lights in their blood, maybe it was a good thing, NOT! What are the chances I didn't fuck up the plants. Anyone done this before - anyone that will admit it that is? If so, how did it affect the grow.

The plants literally stretched 2.5 inches trying to get light from that little bulb. In my defense, if there is one, it's kinda hard to notice a 60w incandescent light with 1k of HPS burning your retinas. lol.

WHOA!!! THERE!!! Slow down skippy!!!

Don't know as I've ever been called skippy, lol. You can call me just about anything you want as long as it's not piss for brains or something like that, lol.

 

[gaiusmarius]

yeah this is a typical over sight. happened to my mates b52 grow, first one of his timer blew and 2 of the lights stayed on all night after the first week of 12/12, it took 2 day to notice, then we got it back on track and a week later he tells me he forgot to turn the flouro back off, so again flowering was interrupted for a few days, in the end the plants grew as high as they could, we had the lights up right under the ceiling, lol. other then the plants being too big and an unrelated pm problem, lol, the harvest seems ok. it's not dry yet, but it look ok all thing considered. so don't worry about having the veg phase extended by a few hours, because that's all that happened in your case.

speaking of stretch, you will be seeing a lot of that in the next 2 weeks, lol.

one time years ago, i was looking after a room, for a mate on holiday. it was the 7th week of a mixed WW, WWA and super skunk harvest, i went in did some checking and tank filling, but because i arrived a few minutes before lights on i turned them on manually and forgot to but them back on timer, after i left. as i only checked them when the lights were on normally i didn't catch my mistake till some 10 days had past and the buds were starting to look very strange, lol. man was it embarrassing. but it hasn't happened to me since. so i learned my lesson, hehe.

always check and double check everything before you leave the grow.

 

[Guest]

Just an update on the growth of the kids. Put into 12/12 on the 22nd and the tallest plant was 14" if memory serves. Today they are all at 21.5" or thereabouts. Amazing, and they're eating me out of house and home. Feeding at ec of 1.6 and pH of 5.6. I eased the nutes up to this point and the plants seem to be doing great. My runoff has been at about 0.75 and 5.9 so it seems I'm not getting any buildup of salts and the plants are eating about half what is being fed to them. I've been watering just to runoff and at the rate of about 2 qts a day.

Just for comparison, here they are 5 days ago




And here they are today.




This just shows you how great coco is to grow in. The couple of times things have gotten out of whack, once we all worked out what the problem was, all that was needed was to accurately measure the pH (bought a Hanna meter) and pour enough water at pH 5.8 through the coco and things were right back on track. pH was too high due to the fact that I was using a $5 test kit that used drops.

I'm using RO water to water with. Before I add anything to it its ec is 0.0 and its pH is 6.0. I add the nutes at 60 mL/5gal to bring the ec to 1.6 and that alone drops the pH to about 4.9. I add about 1/16 teaspoon/5gal of pH up and that pulls the pH back up to 5.6. All in all things look great.

peace

 

[Guest]

i arrived a few minutes before lights on i turned them on manually and forgot to but them back on timer, after i left. as i only checked them when the lights were on normally i didn't catch my mistake till some 10 days had past and the buds were starting to look very strange, lol. man was it embarrassing. but it hasn't happened to me since. so i learned my lesson, hehe.

always check and double check everything before you leave the grow.

I did this few yrs ago, about 5 days before I noticed. Added about another month onto harvest time and instead of long straight colas they all had 2-3" budlets sticking out all the way along. Nightmare to trim but was otherwise fine, may have even increased yield. hehe
As GM says double check anything you touch, always. And for me on the w/e its triple checkin, LOL

 

[Guest]

I did this few yrs ago, about 5 days before I noticed. Added about another month onto harvest time and instead of long straight colas they all had 2-3" budlets sticking out all the way along. Nightmare to trim but was otherwise fine, may have even increased yield. hehe
As GM says double check anything you touch, always. And for me on the w/e its triple checkin, LOL

I'm witya on that. I'm so gunshy over the deal it's hard to go to bed until I hear the lights kick off at midnight. And guess what, tonight they didn't!!! I waited til about 12:15 and then rotated the timer and I could rotate it all the way around several times and still nothing. It's one of those push tabs down for lights on things and I bought it through a hydro shop. It was supposed to be a good brand. I'm ordering a digital tonight. Can't take a chance on a $30 dollar timer fucking up the whole grow, hehe.

Peace

 

[NPK]

Hey Mojo, if you haven't already placed your order, now you can get digital timers at Home Depot. I paid $20 for mine.

 

[gaiusmarius]

yo mojo

your plants are looking good man

the problem is, both digital and mechanical timers can burn out when being used for 600 watt lights. even just with one light on, the timers can burn out and stop turning the lamps off. i have come to the conclusion that it's a matter of luck also. i.e., how well it was assembled? if you're lucky, you get one and it lasts ages. otherwise it's a real lottery with how long it will last. unless you use a relay and only have the timer controlling the relay, which in turn relays the current to the lamps. if it is done correctly you can use those cheap timers to steer a huge room.

i'm glad you mentioned that you are using pure RO water, this can be a problem when using the canna nutes. they are made with high cal levels in the tap water in mind. also the trace elements that you get in the tap water can cause problems if they are missing completely.

i would suggest using 50 tap water once every few waterings. you might also be well advised to add cal mag once in a while too if you wanna stay with pure ro water. this is something that will be too late to correct 100% by the time the first symptoms show. i had to learn this lesson the hard way, screwed up a whole yield with pure ro water and canna coco A+B. they are not made with ro in mind, they are made with typical tap water in mind. if i was you i'd work with 50/50 tap/ro all the way, it will mean no ph minus or plus necessary, the tap water ph will act like ph plus.

 

[Guest]

yo mojo

your plants are looking good man

if you'the problem is, both digital and mechanical timers can burn out when being used for 600 watt lights. even just with one light on, the timers can burn out and stop turning the lamps off. i have come to the conclusion that it's a matter of luck also. i.e., how well it was assembled? re lucky, you get one and it lasts ages. otherwise it's a real lottery with how long it will last. unless you use a relay and only have the timer controlling the relay, which in turn relays the current to the lamps. if it is done correctly you can use those cheap timers to steer a huge room.

About that... I figured I'd spend some money and get a good mechanical timer. The one that malfunctioned didn't do so because it got hot and the switch inside melted. It malfunctioned because the little lever that is held down by the push pins while in the pushed down "on position got a little sticky and failed to pop up when it got to the first raised pin for the off cycle. I thumped the side of the timer after I got pissed and it released and popped up, turning the lights off. Just weak, poor design. I spent some money and got what I thought would probably be about the best mechanical timer I could find and figured if price has anything to do with quality of construction, it ought to be good. Here's a pic.

Probably paid more than most would think a good idea for a timer, but I've got a lot of cash and time and energy already invested in the grow and don't think now's the time to start scrimping, know what I mean, hehe.



Green Air 24-DT-1 dual timer

This controller features two independent 24 hour clock timers in one housing. Each time clock has a separate power cord and duplex outlet.

Each timer has 96 non-detachable 15 minute on\off trippers. Function indicator lights display outlet power mode.

High quality precision synchronous motors operate internal 15 amp switches. All Green Air Products controllers are housed in black anodized brush finish aluminum enclosures which can not break, chip or corrode.

Use for lighting, pumps, solenoids, relays, fans, etc. Operates on 110 VAC with 15 amp switching capacity.

i'm glad you mentioned that you are using pure RO water, this can be a problem when using the canna nutes. they are made with high cal levels in the tap water in mind. also the trace elements that you get in the tap water can cause problems if they are missing completely.

i would suggest using 50 tap water once every few waterings. you might also be well advised to add cal mag once in a while too if you wanna stay with pure ro water. this is something that will be too late to correct 100% by the time the first symptoms show. i had to learn this lesson the hard way, screwed up a whole yield with pure ro water and canna coco A+B. they are not made with ro in mind, they are made with typical tap water in mind. if i was you i'd work with 50/50 tap/ro all the way, it will mean no ph minus or plus necessary, the tap water ph will act like ph plus.

Thanks for the info gm, never would have thunk it, hehe. I'll start using a 50/50 mix. After the salt prob, I sort of made up my mind I was going to leave everything out and feed RO with nutes. Didn't really stop to think about the effect not having trace elements in the h2o would have on the plants. Good save, dude.

Question... the tap water/RO water mix is going to have an ec of let's say 0.2 or so before the nutes are even added. If I'm feeding at an ec of 1.6 with RO water that has an ec of 0.0 and the present ec is made up entirely of N-P-K from the A+B, will the fact that the plants will not be getting as much N-P-K in their water have a negative effect on them???

 

[gaiusmarius]

it shouldn't have a negative effect on the plants. just stay at 1.6 including the tap water ec. unless you see that the plants older fan leaves are getting light green, then you just go up to 1.7 or 1.8 let the plants be your guide. i know the idea of having 0 ec in your starting water is cool, but in practice it only works properly if you have nutes made for ro water or if you add the trace elements and extra cal separately. with canna coco A+B that's not the case, so you have to use some tap water. a starting ec of 0.2 is totally great. the plants will make use of most of the stuff that makes up that ec 0.2, so don't look at it as wasted, it's not.

 

[Caligrown]

Well S-H-I-T! My tap goes between 35-120 ppm depending on the season... I wish I would have know about this before I went out last week and installed my new R/O unit. I guess I will be drinking some fresh water at least

 

[Guest]

Well S-H-I-T! My tap goes between 35-120 ppm depending on the season... I wish I would have know about this before I went out last week and installed my new R/O unit. I guess I will be drinking some fresh water at least

Hey Cali, I feel your pain dude. I had gone out and gotten an ro system at uncle Sam's and the only thing that kept me from putting it in was the fact that the sink is stainless and my wife told me I couldn't take the squirter out of the sink so I could use its hole for the ro faucet. Took it back. I had no idea either. I used ro during the seedling stage but I guess it does't matter at that stage. Dude, least you'll be drinking healthy. Maybe it'll add more smokin years to your life. LOL.

By the way, I wish you wouldn't FUCKING cuss in my thread, hahaha. Just kidding. Tell ya what, dude, any time ya get pissed off in another forum or something, you can come back here and light the place up with all the colorful language ya want to. Or PM me - we'll just cuss back and forth with each other, dude. What're friends for.

 

[Guest]

Well here they are 10 days into flower. Amazing how they've shot up. gm, I was reading the info on the nutrient analysis of the coco A and it says it's "derived from calcium nitrate, guaranteed analysis: nitrogen 4% - calcium 5%. Looks like the A has more calcium in it than it does nitrogen. Do I still need to supplement my RO water with calcium. I'm going to have to order some Cal Mag + if I do. Nobody around here carries it - like drug stores, GNC nutrition, etc. Things seem to be rockin along ok. No apparent problems other than not knowing how many girls I've got. When should I be able to tell? Don't the males show up a couple of weeks before the females?

Later

 

[gaiusmarius]

Hey mojo,

what great looking plants man, how high are you feeding them now?

normally the males show way before the females, when you look at the nodes, you should be able to see pre flowers soon. those typical balls are male, and the ones with a white pistil hair are female. don't dump any plant till you are 100% sure it is a male, lol. considering you are on day 10 of 12/12, i would have thought you would start to see the male flowers. maybe you had feminized seeds, or slow phenos, or all females?

if you haven't done so already, then i would do a quick search and look at some pics of male and female pre-flowers. although once you notice the male balls, it still takes them a few days, to actually open and spread their pollen. as long as there are no female flowers visible, the males can't really do any harm. although it is best to segregate them as soon as you notice them. the males can be taken out of the grow and left on a window sill to finish opening the buds, if you want to do something with the pollen that is. if not just kill the males and dump them.

your plants have the look of heavy feeders at the moment, are the fan leaves light green? or is it just the hps? are you at ec 1.8 yet with the aurora? it seems they look a bit hungry, which would be normal as they have done a huge stretch in the last 10 days.

anyway, all is looking real good so far. oh yes the cal mag.....i.m.o. you will not be needing it, even though coco uses a lot of cal making use of higher levels then in other mediums, it's enough, specially when you include the calcium from the tap water. like i have said before i never used the cal mag in my coco.

i know it seems to be too simple to work, it isn't, lol. the coco A+B makes great yields without any flowering additive, if you add pk at the right time in the right dose, it's a winner.

by the way mojo, as of now, if you haven't already, you can reduce the rhizotonic to 0.5ml per lt. till week 4 of 12/12, when you stop it. this is a newer recommendation from canna which helps keep the roots in that bit of extra good shape. but it's no longer essential, as your plants are from seed and have a powerful root network. the cannazym is good to give at least once a week, even if you are not planning to reuse the medium. if you reuse the coco, you should include the zym in your nutrient mix.

keep up the great work mojo, only around 6 to 7 weeks to go

peace and goodgrowings
gaius

 

[Guest]

OK here's what I think I've ended up with. GM, I'm sticking at about 1.6 ec on the feeding cause like you say they look plenty well fed and I'm not going to go any higher unless the leaves lighten up a lot. They don't look like they're suffering due to too much nitrogen but any more and I think they might. Both Aurora Indica and White Widow seem to be liking the same amount of food lately.

Definitely male. This has always been the tallest of the plants. Aurora Indica


Thinking this one's male too, (white widow, gm you've probably got as much experience as any human out there with this strain)but too early for me to really call it. Others with more experience might be able to tell for sure. Let me know.


Definitely females - 1 White Widow and 1 Aurora Indica




The other one of the 5 is the runt of the litter and it's just too early to even get an idea on that one. So, I could end up with 4 female, but in reality I think I'm on track for two out of five, maybe three. One indica and one widow, with the runt still up for grabs.

I've pulled the male out of the closet but need to know if I intend to pollinate with it, how long will it be before the pods open and release the pollen. I'm definitely keeping it out of the grow area but need to put it someplace temporarily till it opens and I can gather the pollen. Just kinda wanted to know how long it would be till I can gather the pollen and destroy the evidence. Any ideas out there? And should I keep the male on a 12/12 so it will release the pollen or can I just do what I want with regards to light and have it still produce pollen?

 

[Guest]

If its any help to you taller plants have a greater chance of being male this is not a definite thing but in my experience its a true thing. I think it's so the males can drop pollen onto the females. This may be a myth, not in my case.

 

[Guest]

thanks octodiem, the one that's definitely male is the tallest and it's not a myth. You're right, generally speaking according to all I've read. The other 4 plants are the same height and I think one or two of them are males also. Look like the hardiest of the bunch are male.